Either of these would help me; they could wrest,
Pervert, and poison all they hear or see,
With senseless glosses, and allusions. 
Now, if you be good devils, fly me not. 
You know what dear and ample faculties
I have endowed you with:  I’ll lend you more. 
Here, take my snakes among you, come and eat,
And while the squeez’d juice flows in your black jaws,
Help me to damn the author.  Spit it forth
Upon his lines, and shew your rusty teeth
At every word, or accent:  or else choose
Out of my longest vipers, to stick down
In your deep throats; and let the heads come forth
At your rank mouths; that he may see you arm’d
With triple malice, to hiss, sting, and tear. 
His work and him; to forge, and then declaim,
Traduce, corrupt, apply, inform, suggest;
O, these are gifts wherein your souls are blest. 
What?  Do you hide yourselves? will none appear? 
None answer? what, doth this calm troop affright you? 
Nay, then I do despair; down, sink again: 
This travail is all lost with my dead hopes. 
If in such bosoms spite have left to dwell,
Envy is not on earth, nor scarce in hell. [Descends slowly.

The third sounding.

[As she disappears, enter prologue hastily, in armour.

Stay, monster, ere thou sink-thus on thy head
Set we our bolder foot; with which we tread
Thy malice into earth:  so Spite should die,
Despised and scorn’d by noble industry. 
If any muse why I salute the stage,
An armed Prologue; know, ’tis a dangerous age: 
Wherein who writes, had need present his scenes
Forty-fold proof against the conjuring means
Of base detractors, and illiterate apes,
That fill up rooms in fair and formal shapes. 
’Gainst these, have we put on this forced defence: 
Whereof the allegory and hid sense
Is, that a well erected confidence
Can fright their pride, and laugh their folly hence. 
Here now, put case our author should, once more,
Swear that his play were good; he doth implore,
You would not argue him of arrogance: 
Howe’er that common spawn of ignorance,
Our fry of writers, may beslime his fame,
And give his action that adulterate name. 
Such full-blown vanity he more doth loth,
Than base dejection; there’s a mean ’twixt both,
Which with a constant firmness he pursues,
As one that knows the strength of his own Muse. 
And this he hopes all free souls will allow: 
Others that take it with a rugged brow,
Their moods he rather pities than envies: 
His mind it is above their injuries.

ActI

Scene 1—­Scene draws, and discovers Ovid in his study.

Ovid. 
   Then, when this body falls in funeral fire,
   My name shall live, and my best part aspire. 
   It shall go so.

[Enter Luscus, with a gown and cap.

Lusc.  Young master, master Ovid, do you hear?  Gods a’me! away with your songs and sonnets and on with your gown and cap quickly:  here, here, your father will be a man of this room presently.  Come, nay, nay, nay, nay, be brief.  These verses too, a poison on ’em!  I cannot abide them, they make me ready to cast, by the banks of Helicon!  Nay, look, what a rascally untoward thing this poetry is; I could tear them now.